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Fraction of A Second

August 6th, 2016, 12pm

The point of intersection. The Bosphorus melting into the Marmara Sea; the Golden Horn meets the Bosphorus. Ships, ships, ships. On a terrace in Cihangir, I can forever watch the ships go by. Passenger ferries, cargo ships, private yachts drawing white lines connecting me to the unknown. I walk over to the man of the hour and stand in front of him. He looks into my eyes and cautiously puts his hand on the inside of my right leg, running his hand upward. The moss green skirt is semi-translucent back-lit against the sea and the unknown. I can see his hand, the semiopaque skirt holding me in, and glimpse of the trees and the sea beyond. His hand stops mid-thigh. He is undecided about many things —- including this moment. Will he, won’t he? Does it matter? Maybe it does but more than anything, there is this fraction of a second. This moment and all the tiny details that makes this a memory I wish I had a photo and an essay for. Our lives are filled with cinematic moments such as these if we could learn to see them —- if there is a place that collects scenes from these our moving pictures.

1/125 of a second, August 2 at 2pm in Hanoi.
1/15 of a second, May 28 at 8pm in Bangkok, not nearly as late as I remembered it to be.
1/60 just after 5pm on March 19th in Istanbul, it was cold that day.

Memory crystallized into a fraction of a second. How long did it take for that memory to unfold? Or perhaps that memory was created and distilled all in that same 1/60th of second. In an asynchronous digital reality, Hi.co held and collected these eternities, creating permanence out of impermanence.

In a way, Hi.Co is a practice in mindfulness, in present tense. We are never reaching a conclusion, for a list of action items or an opinion on what’s next. Instead, for every polaroid moment, we are asking to pause the linear, step out of space and time and stand on the hilltop in Iraqi Kurdistan in 50°C heat to survey the city, to pull up a plastic stool and sit down next at the stall in Bangkok. Be here with me for a second and see what I see.

The poet David Whyte writes, “A full inhabitation of memory makes human beings conscious, a living connection between what has been, what is and what is about to be.” Cheers to everyone at Hi.Co, for creating this space that witnessed our fleeting scenes, for making us more conscious, human and present.

I hope we meet again.

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